Your consonants... they're so... HARD!

One other thing I really love about television are these voice-over announcers who crank out promos and news opens all over the country. You may have noticed in the preceding example, the guy is the same one who does opens for a local station.

One of the tricks to sounding 'urgent,' as they like to say (or at least they did when I was in the business) is that you never use the 'm' or 'n' sounds because they sound passive. Instead, you substitute a hard consonant.

If you listen to the intro in the previous post, you'll hear that what the guy actually says is:


"DOWWWW!

News 12 Spoahts

with Pat MBurphy!"


DOWWWW is really big in TV news. TV news is immediate, intense and filled with drama and excitement, and it's all happening DOWWWW. The station wants you to know that it's not covering old, stale news - it's covering news (or dews) that's going on DOWWWW.

I guess you could say they're DOWWWWists....

...but I wish you wouldn't.